“Slam Dunk”

One person who has read early drafts of the book said Mr. Tenet defended himself by carefully parsing the ‘slam dunk’ comment: he said he was not telling Mr. Bush that there was rock-solid evidence that Mr. Hussein had chemical and biological weapons, only that the president could make a ‘slam dunk’ case to the American public about these weapons programs.

So the case for Saddam’s WMDs was not a "slam dunk". But the ability to foster enough fear and panic among Americans to persuade them to go to war on the basis of the WMD intelligence was a "slam dunk." Or at least that’s a plausible inference. If that’s true, then the betrayal of faith is even deeper than we imagined.